Can Social Media Sites Boost My SEO?

Best Ways Of Boosting New York SEO Using Social Media

Today I will be discussing how to use Facebook in order to give your search engine rankings a boost. I mainly will be talking about Google, but the concepts that I will be sharing can help you on Bing as well as other search engines also if that is part of your overall SEO strategy. We also will be looking at optimizing for the Facebook internal Graph Search function. This is a fascinating trend that you should definitely keep an eye on.

How Social Media Is Used By Google (or Is It)?

First things first. If you’d like to use social networks for Google SEO, then you first need to understand what the Google algorithm is currently doing with data on a network – what is indexed, what “signals” Google cares about, etc. When I say “signals,” what I mean is counting social content’s popularity as a ranking factor uses by Google – for example, increasing the rank on Facebook posts with lots of likes. It might seem obvious that you would want to learn about what Google does as it relates to Facebook. However, I have recently seen lots of bad advice being given about social signals and Google.

So be careful. Especially watch for advice that tells you:

• We know that social signals are used by Google because of there being a high correlation between social content and ranking that gets liked or shared a lot. That way of thinking frequently is in reference to studies on search ranking correlation done by Searchmetrics or Moz. The findings are misrepresented by people repeatedly though and starts taking a causation influence where one probably doesn’t actually exist.
• We know social signals are used by Google because Google has actually told us they do – back in 2010. Recently there has been lots of content that refers to an old video where Matt Cutts stated that Google used social signals coming from Facebook. However, that video is several years old and there is nothing that lasts forever – particularly advice on the internal workings of Google’s algorithm.

So where does all of this leave us? Are social signals coming from social media sites really used by Google for ranking purposes? The smart money is saying no right now.

I am placing my bets on two important pieces of intelligence that are trusted by most reputable SEO:

• The most recent guidance from Matt Cutts – the widely-circulated January 2014 video where he stated that Google does index Facebook as well as Twitter pages in the same way they do other pages, but that they don’t have any special ways of counting up “signals” such as shares and likes. If you haven’t seen the video already it’s worth watching.
• The December 2013 investigation by Stone Temple Consulting on whether or not SEO is impacted by Facebook activity. Eric Enge, in this very well-documented study, found that Facebook post likes don’t have any effect on Google results. This is also worth reading.
• The December 2013 investigation by Stone Temple Consulting on whether or not SEO is impacted by Facebook activity. Eric Enge, in this very well-documented study, found that Facebook post likes don’t have any effect on Google results. This is also worth reading.

How Is Social Media Beneficial For SEO?

Even if rank isn’t directly impacted by social signals, the network still offers plenty of potential for providing SEO value. You can use it, just like Twitters, for building links and traffic to your website, and a majority of SEO agree that this is a good idea. Below are some of the best practices on how to do that. However, what really makes Facebook stand out in SEO today is Graph Search – which is the internal search engines that were launched by Facebook in 2013 that is gradually starting to build momentum. Graph Search can potentially be a credible threat to Google’s supremacy, and Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, went on record earlier in the year basically stating that is where the company would like to take things. Graph search is a type of semantic search technology which response to complicated user queries and also parses natural language instead of simply searching for keyword matches. It brings data in from Bing as well whenever the content from Facebook is too thin for returning rich results on a specific query. Graph Search harnesses the power generated by the interconnectedness of friends, along with all of their friends and Facebook information, to return something that none of the search engines are able to do today. It goes well beyond the standalone search engine’s potential for adding social signals to their algorithmic functions. It still remains to be seen, whether individuals will start to use it enough in order to challenge Google. However, it is worth paying attention to.

There are two ways at least that Graph Search can assist you. First of all, it is a very powerful tool for Google SEO t study your fans as well as their interests at a fairly granular level. However, you can also use it for competitor analysis in order to learn what is liked and disliked by their fans. Second of all, it is worthwhile to strategize about being found within Graphic Search. It was acknowledged by Mark Zuckerberg that it would probably be a 5 to 10-year project in terms of getting where he would like to go – however, it looks like that could happen, and thinking ahead does make sense. Keep reading to learn what you can do right now.

Takeaways:

• Social Media Tactics for Bing, Graph Search and Google Optimizing for Graph Search does use many of the same tactics that you use for Google and Bing SEO. The practices below will help you with them.
• To engage in the most critical practice. Create content that is shareable and encourage sharing and liking. Bing and Graph Search both directly incorporate social signals into their SERS. However, actively developing relationships and inviting people to participate with your content can also indirectly help you with Google through building links for your website potentially.

Other Things That Can Be Done:

• Use Graph Search for researching competitors and customers.
• Connect your page with all of your other online web accounts.
• Fill out all information as possible and make use of some of your Google SEO keywords.
• Get a custom Facebook URL.
• Make your page name be either your company or brand name and nothing else.

To Summarize

Social Media doesn’t offer direct benefits currently for Google SEO in terms of search results being impacted by social signals. However, it can be used to build links and traffic to your website as well as other online properties. Graph Search can be used to discover what your competitors and fans are talking about and doing. We should all watch to find out if Graph Search actually delivers on its aim of becoming a serious contender of Google’s.

Call or contact us today for more information. Visit our blog for more related articles.